


Never Ever Ever

by anr



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-19
Updated: 2011-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Ever Ever

**Author's Note:**

> Post- _Tick Tick Tick_ (7x10).

Tick.

  


* * *

  


(He doesn't cry.

_Of course_ he doesn't cry. Crying is for the Teds of the world, the Marshalls, the guys whose hearts hashtag-break and hashtag-crack and hashtag-shatter and _his_ heart? His heart is still beating, is still thudding against the bones of his rib cage, hard and heavy and _there_.

He finishes his drink, and makes his goodbyes, and heads upstairs. The petals crush under his fingertips, the smoke from the candles tickles his nose, but he doesn't cry and when he finally gets home, he drinks three glasses of Glen McKenna, and burns the obvious failure suit he's wearing, saves the previous night's video, and stands in the shower until he's sure -- until --

The shampoo he's not using stings and stings and stings in his eyes.

  


* * *

  


In his bed, in the sheets he forgot to change, he lies back and thinks about hurricanes and battleships and sandcastles. He can smell roses, still. He can --

Closing his eyes, he breathes.

He'll never forget, he thinks.

  


* * *

  


He thinks about taking some time away and stepping all the way back -- Vermont, he thinks, Vermont _definitely_ \-- but the one day he tries avoidance everything just hurts so much worse. He needs to see her every day, he knows. Even if it's just for a few minutes, even if it stings, even if they're just friends and nothing more ever again, he _needs_ \--

He goes to work.

He goes to the bar.

He goes home.

He lathers, rinses, repeats.

  


* * *

  


He's not entirely sure what he's supposed to do in the vacuum that follows. Should he take that transfer at work he's been postponing for the last seven years? Should he stay? Should he --

Because it seems like the sort of thing he _should_ be doing, he picks up a girl at McLaren's and takes her to her home and kisses her, takes off her top, her pants, runs his hands over her breasts, her stomach, his fingers in her hair. He bends her over the back of her couch and fucks her from behind and doesn't call her Robin when he comes, doesn't call her anything at all.

He actually can't even remember her name, or if he even asked for it back in the bar, and that's probably not the only reason why she slaps him, after, but it's a good enough excuse as any, really. He doesn't blame her.

The sting of her palm on his cheek feels better than the sex had.

  


* * *

  


Kevin never directly asks him about his breakup with Nora.

Kevin makes sure he's always between him and Robin when they're sitting in the booth.

Kevin smiles and laughs and rolls his eyes at _all_ the right moments when he's talking.

Kevin kisses Robin and takes her home.

Kevin knows, he knows.

  


* * *

  


He picks up another girl --

\-- and she slaps him too.

He's not entirely sure what he's doing wrong here.

  


* * *

  


Robin stands too close to him while he's buying a round at the bar, her warmth seeping through the Italian silk of his shirt until he feels like his every possible nerve ending is standing at attention. She does this far too often now -- alternating between being _tooclose_ and epically far away -- and it gives him whiplash every time.

"What happened to your eye?" she asks, her gaze flickering over his last night's thank you.

"Occupational hazard of being awesome," he says, taking back his credit card from Carl. When he turns to slide his wallet away, she reaches up and touches her fingertips to the skin above his cheekbone, tracing the shadows of blue and black.

He freezes.

Slowly, she leans in.

"Beer!" shouts Ted in the distance. "Beeeeeeeeeeeeer!"

His hand moves up to touch hers, his fingers sliding over her knuckles and his thumb pressing against her palm. "Don't," he manages, voice low and aching. " _Robin_ \--"

She pulls her hand away so suddenly it's almost a fresh slap; he winces.

"I'm sorry," she says quickly, her consonants melting together. She turns and picks up two of the beers and is back in the booth, smiling up at Kevin as he returns from the bathroom and slides in beside her, before he's even finished parsing her mumbled apology.

_Don't_ , he thinks.

  


* * *

  


He really needs to buy a new type of shampoo, he knows.

But he stops picking up girls in the bar instead.

And in the coffee shop, the laundromat, the cinema, the hot dog stand, the office, the airport, the laser tag equipment store, the pet store, the doctor's office, the mall, the travel agent's, the train station, the bookstore, the museum, the police station, the hardware store, and on the internet and the street and the phone and --

  


* * *

  


He spends an afternoon with James and his nephew and his mom, dressing his nephew in the custom little suits he had tailored up for him and reading him fairytales about women who just don't know what they want and how awesome they really, truly are, all messiness aside, and --

James hands him a beer, after. "If you want to talk about it..."

"And ruin this carefully constructed reality bubble of awesomeness?" He shakes his head and sips at his beer and stares at the sun setting behind his mom's neighbour's garage. He slides a quick look at his brother. "Thanks, though."

James raises his beer bottle. "Anytime."

_Time_ , he thinks, _is waiting for a midnight that's never ever ever going to come_. But he raises his own bottle in response, and turns back to the sun, and listens to the sounds of suburbia all around him, familiar and terrifying and wanting.

  


* * *

  


Not sleeping around when there's no immediate gratification for it? Totally less awesome than he could have ever imagined.

That said, his cheeks start to heal and unbruise and he saves a small truckload of cash from the not needing to buy new props. He completely aces his answers to the Attorney General for that work thing and he comes up with a legendarily _epic_ payback for that time Lily took the left side of the booth when he wanted it back in '03 -- which, okay, it'll take him another two years for the plan to come to fruition but, still. Goals and accomplishments, he has them.

At the bar, Marshall tells him that his hair is looking very, very clean and Ted begs him for a night off of _Have you met Ted?_ because of something pathetic like _exhaustion_ , and Lily tells him that her pregnancy brain is telling her that his fingers smell like pork rinds and he should totally let her lick them -- or something like that, he sort of tuned out everything she said except for the words _fingers_ and _lick_.

At the bar, Robin corners him and jabs a finger into his chest, all beautiful and angry and so very, very vivid. "This whole sudden celibacy thing? It's not your deal, okay. So just --" she exhales sharply, " _go back to Nora_."

That's her idea of a solution, he knows. Playing it safe and by the numbers. Slowly, he starts to smile.

"Okay?" she presses.

"Robin --" He reaches out to where her hand is resting on the edge of the bar, to touch her hand and cover her fingers with his own and hold on tight, and stops himself at the last moment. He puts his hands in his pockets. "I can't."

"Sure you can! A little wine, a little you know you know -- she'll forgive you!"

Maybe, maybe not, but. "Robin," he says again, patiently, "she's not the one I love." He careful not to say _want_ , even though that's just as true, or _need_ , which to people like them is definitely the scarier four-letter word.

She shakes her head violently, her hair whipping around her cheeks. "No. No, no, no -- you should be _happy_ , Barney. You deserve to be happy!"

He knows he does. "I know," he says, easily.

She blinks twice, like he's surprised her, and then nods jerkily. "Okay then," she says.

"Okay," he says.

She turns to leave, hesitates, opens her mouth, closes it again. She walks away and he watches her go.

_She_ makes him happy, he knows.

  


* * *

  


It's not that he's _waiting_ for her, per se. That would be pathetic. It's more like -- okay, so, awesomeness? It takes _time_. Sometimes. It's like learning how to cook Shinjitsu Hibachi, and speak Ukrainian, and avoid perjury charges in forty-two states. It took him _years_ to find and fall in love with her and know, beyond a shadow of any doubt, what his forever should look like -- he shouldn't, he _can't_ , begrudge her the time she needs to realise the same.

He thinks about that night sometimes, that first night in the story of how they could have been getting back together, because while he knows he was right -- it wasn't their best night together, wasn't their most athletic, or creative, or mind-blowingly dirtiest -- he also knows that it was real, real and _true_ , and he wants that so, so much now, perfect in all its imperfectness...

In her apartment, Robin leans over the back of his chair to see his cell phone screen, pointing at the link he should click on that will prove Ted so legendarily wrong and chortling madly. Her laughter is infectious; as he joins in, he feels the weight of her hand on his shoulder for the briefest of brief moments before she realises what she's doing and snatches her hand back.

He can not-wait a little longer.

  


* * *

  


Out of the blue, he gets a run of good luck that's almost as good as a Xing Hai Shi Bu Xing jellybean. _So good_ , in fact, that if it wasn't such a high, he'd probably be concerned about the likely impending shoe fall.

Ted lets him wingman for him again -- thank _god_ \-- for five nights straight, which is not the most epic of all challenges, admittedly, but when he self-imposes the no lying rule? Awesome.

Robin lets him borrow her makeup so he can drag-queen-up Marshall when he passes out during their five-hundred and seventy-ninth _Today is a Day of the Week Ending in Y_ celebration, and then helps him to reblog it a hundred times over on tumblr when Marshall finds out.

Lily gives him a temporary free pass to illusion and doesn't even blink when he accidently sets fire to the sweater Marshall's mother knitted for the baby, and the importer who supplies him with his shampoo gives him a valued customer discount on his next five deliveries. Even Marshall -- Marshall who won't usually fool around in the paranormal in case the paranorm's consider it a mockery -- agrees to come back to Goliath National for a day and pretend to be the ghost of the ghost who haunts the thirty-first floor's female bathroom in order to prove to Nellie Clarks, once and for all, that he wasn't lying when he said the reason he was late to last quarter's third final review meeting was because he was spiritually obligated to comfort Jenni-the-temp in every position possible after her traumatic scare earlier that day.

And then Kevin breaks up with Robin.

  


* * *

  


The exact story of what happened between Robin and Kevin is a convoluted twenty-two minute narration of questionable actions and indecisive dialogue and he doesn't even hear half of what she reluctantly lets Lily drag out of her.

She looks miserable and defensive as she paces in front of the television and he can't stop looking at her, can't stop from hurting for her. She cared for Kevin, he knows. She cared, and now it's over, and as much as he wants to do something epic, something that will make her smile and _feel_ \--

He stays in the armchair, silent and watchful, and drinks his beer.

  


* * *

  


She disappears up to the roof after awhile, unable to take the autopsy any longer, and Ted follows her. Marshall and Lily stay for a little longer, waiting to see if they'll come back down, but then Lily says, _pumpernickel_ , and Marshall gets wide-eyed and excited, and they run away to have pregnancy sex like the boring old marrieds they are.

It's almost midnight and his beer is finished, and his ass is getting numb from sitting in the armchair for so long, but he's not sure he's ready to move just yet. Not sure he's ready to hope and wonder and _want_ \--

She's single.

And _he's_ single. And epically in love with her. And there's a small but significant chance she still feels the same --

But it's too soon. He _knows_ it's too soon. If he proposed anything now it would feel _planned_ and _wrong_ and it would fail, spectacularly, because that's what their plans always do, each and every single time.

But he doesn't want to leave without saying goodbye. Doesn't want her to assume anything from nothing once again. So he clears away the empty bottles and pizza boxes still dotting the coffee table, and fixes his tie, and heads over to the window to call out that he's leaving.

She and Ted are sitting on the fire escape stairs up top, talking about the break up, and he doesn't want to eavesdrop, doesn't want to hear her say that not being with Kevin is a mistake or the last thing she ever wanted, but he doesn't want to interrupt either. She sounds like she's on a verbal roll, sounds like she's dumping all of the angst and frustration onto Ted's sometimes feminine shoulders, and that's a good thing, he knows, an _unmessy_ thing, and more than anything else, he wants what she needs.

He always has.

  


* * *

  


He hasn't been in her room since that night, has been extremely careful about maintaining that boundary in the face of all others, and it's disconcerting to realise that the only difference between then and now is the absence of roses.

Absently, he runs his hand through his hair.

"It's in the bedside table."

He doesn't jump at the sound of her voice suddenly behind him, but he does turn to face her. "I'm --"

Pushing past him, she strides over to the table and yanks open the drawer. A quick fumble, and then she's turning back to him and grabbing his hand, her touch rough and angry. Holding his hand up, she drops the petal onto his palm.

"Happy now?" she asks, her voice twisting.

As if. "Robin --"

"No! No. You don't get to be all 'this is about you' when it's not. It's not. _This had nothing to do with you_."

He wasn't actually going to _say_ that but there's a rose petal that she refused to throw away in his hand, a rose petal that he accidently left for her, a rose petal that she somehow _knew_ was from him and kept _because_ of that and even if it wasn't the whole reason for her break up, it was -- according to what he just overheard her admitting to Ted on the fire escape -- the breaking point, so. "Yes," he says, simply. "It did."

Her hand is shaking around his, trembling, and it's probably from anger but it might also be from something else, and this moment, this moment is drawing out, longer and longer and _longer_ \--

"I'm a mes--" she starts, and he snaps, shaking his head and turning his hand so that he's holding hers instead, the dried petal crumbling between them.

He tugs hard, pulling her to him, risking everything with this utterly inappropriate timing that he definitely hasn't planned for, and manages to get out, "you're _awesome_ ," before her mouth finds his and they're kissing and kissing and his future, her future, _their_ future, together, he knows, is suddenly real and true and _here_ and --)

  


* * *

  


Tick.

He finishes his drink.

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/481505.html>


End file.
